Scout's Honor
by messyfeathers
Summary: There are reasons Cecil doesn't believe in mountains. Reasons that go back to a schoolyard, a Cub Scout, and a very illegal book. (Cecil/Earl Harlan. sort of a kid!fic, more just follows the story of their lives)


_Author Notes: I'm a Cecilos shipper through and through, but something about Earl and Cecil just tugs at my heart, so I decided to write what I think the two of them could have had. Mild bullying is involved, in case that's a sensitive area for anyone reading. Also I don't own Night Vale (but you probably already knew that by now.)_

* * *

Cecil stared down at the smooth surface of the bloodstone. The flecks of red caught the light as he tilted it back and forth between his hands. Outside his bedroom door the sounds of scraping dishes drifted through the quiet house as his mother cleaned up the remains of his twelfth birthday cake. There had been a lot of remains this year. The thirty or so kids in his class had all received his mother's carefully handwritten invitations, but not a single one had attended. Their absence only added to the welling disappointment in Cecil's stomach. The scarlet bloodstone he had received as his coming-of-age gift wasn't helping much either; it only reminded him of the scarlet envelope that had been just as absent as his classmates. He leaned over the edge of his bed and slipped the smooth stone beneath the bedframe as his mother had instructed. With a sigh he made his way down to the kitchen and lifted himself up to sit on the counter.

"You're still upset about the letter aren't you?" his mother commented without even glancing in his direction. He nodded. "Cecil, not everyone travels the same path. You're destined for other things. Great things."

"What things?" he asked in vain for what felt like the hundredth time. His mother never answered the question when he always asked, even though he knew she knew. She knew everything. She just made a point of never telling people what their futures held for them unless it seemed absolutely necessary. Eventually he got bored of the silence and pushed himself down off the counter. Mumbling something about needing a new binder for school, he slipped out the front door and into the heat of the August afternoon. It was a Tuesday night, the weekly scheduled night for the Boy Scouts covert meeting in the vacant lot behind the Ralph's. For a few weeks now he had been very quietly sneaking around the perimeter of the store to the loading dock in the back and sitting on the produce crates to watch the scout meetings from afar. Now that his exclusion from the group was final and official, he decided tonight would be his last night to watch. He nestled down on the asphalt against a box marked '_Ecuadorian Iguanas_' and watched as the group of older boys in their crisp olive green uniforms knelt in a circle and swayed in unison. Behind them the handful of new recruits stood in a perfectly straight line as Scout Master Wendell read each of them the pledge and branded their left wrist. Cecil subconsciously rubbed at his own left wrist, the skin smooth and unmarked. The disappointment was its own stinging form of brand as it glowed hot in the pit of his stomach. He pushed himself up to walk home, but the crate of iguanas collapsed behind him with a collective hiss. Iridescent reptiles began to escape, crawling over Cecil's limbs as he attempted to clamber to his feet. He brushed violently at his clothes, not pleased at the sensation of sticky toes meandering over his body. The scout master had stopped reading mid-pledge as the troop turned to pinpoint the cause of the ruckus. Cecil's eyes locked with those of the new recruit whose wrist was held only inches beneath the red glow of the brand. The pudgy cheeks all criss-crossed with freckles beneath the shock of ginger hair, the pale eyes that crinkled with a sympathetic smile. Thoroughly mortified, Cecil hurried around the corner of the Ralph's as quickly as he could and walked briskly all the way home without looking back.

* * *

The first day of school was lonely for Cecil, but he didn't mind. He never minded time to himself, especially since he was very used to it. During recess he wandered across the school parking lot where the other children played games or huddled in circles to gossip about one thing or another. His destination was the old tree full of eyes in the corner of the lot. It had been his schoolyard companion ever since he discovered it at the start of the second grade. Almost every day he climbed into the tangled boughs and spent the half hour of free time talking to the tree all about everything. The tree was a good listener. That particular day he leaned against the tangled fork a few feet up in the tree and related the news of the summer.

"My mother got me a bloodstone for my birthday, and it's pretty great, honestly. I've been practicing my chanting, but I don't know if I'm good enough to actually appease it yet, so I'm scared to try. One time in third grade this girl named Susan stole her older brother's bloodstone and took it to the girls' bathroom upstairs and tried chanting to it but she didn't do it right, and they were never able to wash the stains from the tile floor." He pulled himself from the crook in the tree and up to a thick outcropping branch. Spreading his arms like a tightrope walker, he placed his feet carefully as he stepped along the limb. He slipped slightly. In an effort to regain his balance, one of his blue sneakers wound up colliding with one of the blinking eye sockets on the tree. It shook its leaves in immediate protest. "Sorry, sorry," Cecil apologized quickly, crouching down and stroking the smooth gray bark. The tree settled back to stillness again, and Cecil went back to his tightrope walking. "Anyway, I didn't get my letter. Mom says I'm destined for greater things than becoming a scout, but I don't know if I really believe her. I guess I just wanted to be a part of something, ya know?" He spun back carefully to retrace his steps along the branch. "I snuck back to one last meeting out in the vacant lot, but I tripped and they all saw me so there's no way I could go back there now, even if I wanted to."

"See I thought you were just following me," a voice piped up from behind him. The unexpected response startled Cecil's careful balance and he fell the few short feet to the grass with a thud. "Geez, I'm sorry, I could have timed that better," the voice said as a blurry shape leaned over Cecil and tried to help him up. Cecil blinked a few times, bringing the stranger into focus. It was the red-headed scout whose branding he had so ungracefully interrupted several weeks prior.

"I wasn't following you," he said as he rubbed at the tender spot where the back of his head had collided with a large pebble. "In fact it seems more like you're following me." The scout stared sheepishly at the ground, his pale cheeks flushing red.

"I just recognized you that's all. Why were you talking to the tree?" He nodded towards the tree that was warily peering at them with innumerable small eyes.

"The tree listens," Cecil shrugged. The world spun as he attempted to stand, so he sat back down quickly. The scout sat down beside him.

"Why were you spying on our meeting?" he asked.

"It wasn't spying, I was watching. I was just curious," Cecil sputtered. "I've always wanted to be a scout."

"Why?" the other boy asked, pinching his round features in disgust.

"Because," Cecil replied. "Just because." He glanced down at the boy's wrist where the skin was burned with the reddened, raised shape of an eagle in flight. "Did that hurt?" he asked with a tinge of jealousy.

"Yeah," the scout sighed, folding his arms in an effort to hide the mark. "You're serious aren't you? You actually _want_ to be a scout?" Cecil nodded. "It's not all it's cracked up to be. In fact it's really boring. All we've learned so far is how to start a fire."

"How do you do that?" Cecil asked, eyes sparkling with curiosity.

"You douse whatever you want to catch on fire in lighter fluid and toss on a disposable cigarette lighter," the scout explained.

"That's genius," Cecil grinned, awestruck. "My name's Cecil by the way. Cecil Palmer." He offered his hand. The scout shook it.

"Earl Harlan."

* * *

"Last week we worked on pitching tents, and I was best in the whole rank!" Earl announced excitedly as he sat leaning against the eye tree. "I pitched it almost a full 20 yards!" Cecil swung down easily from a low branch, dangling upside down by his knees.

"I told you you'd do well, you should really listen to me more often." His newly-acquired glasses slipped off and landed in Earl's lap. Cecil still hadn't adjusted to wearing them all the time. Earl twiddled with the glasses for a moment before setting them carefully on the grass a safe distance away. He shivered a bit and folded his arms against the chilled breeze that blew across the parking lot. November was usually brisk, but not normally downright cold.

"So the other day I was helping my dad clean out the attic, and I came across a book." Earl glanced furtively around before dropping to a hushed tone. "It wasn't a municipally approved book either." This caught Cecil's attention and he cast a concerned look at his best friend. Earl just giggled because he had never seen such a serious expression on someone so very upside down.

"Don't laugh, you really shouldn't read those," Cecil chided, pulling himself back up to the branch and hopping down to solid ground. "They're dangerous."

"Come on, Cecil, it's just a book. It was a really cool book too, full of these amazing pictures." Cecil still checked for eavesdroppers, but his curiosity was evident.

"Pictures of what?"

"Of Europe. And not New Europe either. The book didn't talk at all about the Schism or the Great Oyster War or any of the stuff we've been learning about in world history. It talked about all these countries I've never heard of like England and Spain and Liechtenstein."

"The last one sounds made up," Cecil chimed.

"It isn't though!" Earl continued. "There are these mountains there, they're called the Alps, and they're...gosh, Cecil, they're beautiful."

"Mountains don't exist, Earl, everyone knows that," Cecil rolled his eyes.

"They do too, I saw them in the book. I saw a lot of things in the book that they tell us don't exist." Cecil shushed him urgently as a group of giggling girls walked past.

"You should be more careful what you talk about. My mother says there's always at least three people listening covertly at all times." Earl nodded dismissively, but did quiet his voice as he continued.

"There really are mountains though. I'm going to go climb them one day and see what's at the top." The school bell screeched, calling the students back inside to their classes. Cecil and Earl groaned as they pushed themselves to their feet.

"Okay, but only if you take me with you. After all, you wouldn't have earned your compass patch last month if I hadn't sneaked you that map. You'd be lost in Europe without me," Cecil added with a grin.

"I would not," Earl laughed. "But of course you can come with me. Palmer and Harlan - World Explorers. Sound like a deal?" He spit on his hand and held it out to Cecil whose face twisted in disgust.

"What is it with you scouts and bodily fluids?" Cecil complained as he tentatively reached out and shook Earl's outstretched hand.

* * *

"Hey, Ceec, don't worry about me if I disappear in the next few days." Earl said uneasily. The two sat beneath the eye tree whose branches were outfitted in frilly pink blossoms that blinked.

"Ohhhh," Cecil nodded sympathetically as he continued to work on his math homework. "I've heard that infection was going around again. I got the shot last summer though."

"What? No. _Ew, no_." Earl shook his head. "It's something called the Kidnapping. It's a thing they do before the promotion to Blood-Pact training. Apparently they kidnap you suddenly and unexpectedly in the night and take you out to the desert."

"How is it unexpected if you know it's going to happen?" Cecil pointed out.

"Well I mean, they have to give you some sort of time frame so that your parents don't attack the scout master when they intrude into your house in the dead of night. I think they used to lose a lot of assistant troop leaders that way," Earl explained. "Anyway, I just wanted to let you know in case I mysteriously vanish. I'll just be gone for the summer, and back in time for school."

"What about the new Galaxian machine they got in down at the Desert Flower? We were going to set the new high score together over the summer and make it exceptionally unbeatable," Cecil sighed as he shut his algebra notebook. Earl shrugged.

"It's only fair we give everyone else a head start. You can practice while I'm gone and we'll just be that much better in the fall."

"Aren't you even a little afraid of spending a summer out in the empty desert?" Cecil asked. Earl shrugged again.

"Way I see it, I'll be picking up survival skills that could come in handy for our exploring. I'll share everything I learn with you when I get back, I promise. Besides, I get out of taking the tests next week, so I can't complain," he finished with a chuckle.

"_So_ not fair," Cecil groaned as he traded his algebra notebook for chemistry notes.

* * *

The summer was long for Cecil. He wasn't used to spending all his time by himself anymore since almost every day the past school year had been spent with Earl. The lack of his best friend wasn't the only change he had to endure however. The summer was also the beginning of a few more upsetting changes. They had begun as moments that he felt had happened before in some dream and gradually evolved into quite vivid nightmares that seemed to twist into distortions of reality. More than once his mother had stopped what she was doing, walked over to him, and looked him very squarely in the eyes with an oddly pleased expression. He didn't know what she was so impressed by, and when he asked, of course she never replied. A few weeks out from school he was invited to his first ever birthday party - the thirteenth birthday of a girl in his grade named Stacey Rodheiger who had an annoying habit of always sitting next to him in shared classes and following him around in the hallways. He was more than grateful to climb into the passenger seat of his mom's oldsmobile as she finally picked him up outside the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex after the party had ended.

They drove in silence as they always did, but Cecil squirmed in his seat uncomfortably. "What is it?" his mom finally asked.

"Mom, is Earl going to be okay out there on his Kidnapping?" he blurted. She didn't reply. "It's just, Steve Carlsberg was talking about it at the party and he said when the scouts go on their Kidnapping they're taken by the government and replaced with evil identical copies of themselves."

"Is this Steve Carlsberg an expert on the matter?" she asked simply.

"Well, no, I mean. He only moved here like a year ago, and mostly he just goes on and on about weird things. Everyone listens to him because he's a ninth grader."

"I wouldn't listen to him too closely. He sounds like a jerk," she muttered distractedly as they pulled into the driveway next to their little démodé home.

"Is Earl okay though? Can you check on him? Pleeeeeeease, Mom?" he pestered, putting on his most endearing face.

"Will you stop spending all the money I give you for lunch on dishwater taffies down at the sweet shop?" she countered finally after a long moment of thought. Cecil nodded. His mother shut off the engine and leaned back in her seat. She allowed her head to drop back as her eyes went pure white. With a faint static-ey sound her body began to convulse. Cecil had only ever watched his mother do a handful of readings in his lifetime, and only ever one prophecy which was even more terrifying than the readings. The seizures only lasted a portion of a minute, but he still had to avert his eyes. Eventually her body went slack, her head rolling down to rest on her chest. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she sat up straight as if she hadn't just undergone a supernatural out-of-body experience. "He's fine. If he survives the next few weeks, he'll be just fine." She looked as if she wanted to say more, but instead unbuckled her seat belt and exited the car. Cecil followed her around to the trunk to help her unload the grocery bags. "Listen, honey," she knelt down suddenly, allowing the glass jar of applesauce in her hand to drop with a wet crash to the driveway. Cecil was terrified; his mother never called him honey, nor did she ever look at him with such...concern. "People change. You have to know that's just how life goes." She nodded for a long time until he nodded as well. Of all the unusual habits his mother kept, her attempts at affection were by far the most disturbing and abnormal. The moment passed and she went back to unloading the paper grocery bags from the trunk. Cecil carefully sidestepped the spilled applesauce and shards of broken glass as he followed her inside.

* * *

It was the first day of the school year when Cecil saw Earl again. No sooner had he stepped through the doorway of the creative writing classroom than he saw a familiar mess of freckles beneath a shock of red. He was dressed in his full uniform including the hooded velvet cloak of the Blood-Pact Scout as were a few of the other boys in class. "Earl!" Cecil said, hurrying towards his best friend's desk. Earl glanced up at him with a strange mixture of recognition and horror.

"Cecil.." he replied quietly. Cecil slung his backpack down at the desk next to Earl's. Before he could sit down, one of the other scouts in the classroom swooped in and took the seat. Cecil was taken aback slightly.

"Something you needed, Palmer?" the scout sneered. Cecil shook his head and took a step back, mumbling something about recess as he made his way to the empty desks in the back of the classroom.

It took several days of passing notes in creative writing whenever the teacher with the eyes in the back of her head turned to face the class before Earl finally joined Cecil beneath the branches of the eye tree. Even so, he didn't sit down, or even come within a few feet of Cecil who sat cross-legged in a pile of magenta leaves that had fallen.

"Earl!" Cecil scrambled to his feet. "The tree and I were beginning to think you weren't going to show." Earl shifted uncomfortably on his feet. "Tell me about your summer, how was your Kidnapping?" Earl took a step back.

"It was fine I guess. Normal." His eyes wandered to the leaves, to the tree that stared back, to the students craning their necks up to the orchid sky in silence - anywhere but to his best friend.

"Did you learn cool stuff?" Cecil tried again.

"Yeah I guess." There was an extremely awkward silence. Behind Earl, Cecil could see the other scouts huddled in a group staring at the two of them from across he parking lot. He tried to shake off their prying eyes.

"Hey, so I've been practicing Galaxian, I think I have a pretty good strategy down-"

"Cecil, we can't hang out anymore," Earl interrupted.

"What?"

"It's just, this summer changed a lot of stuff. Things are different now, and the scouts - they're my family now. It's just different." He shook his head. "It's not a 'for good' thing, just for a while, just til I can get a few more badges and then I'll be the assistant cub leader and it won't matter so much who I hang out with, okay?" Noticing Cecil's downcast expression, he added in a less-abrupt tone. "I learned how to climb those mountains this summer. Deal still a deal?"

"World explorers," Cecil finished with a half-smile. "You'd better get back to your troop before they catch onto our plans, Harlan," he winked.

"See you around, Palmer!" Earl said with a grin as he saluted and turned to leave.

They did see each other around after that. Sometimes they swapped whispered jokes in the hallways during Darkness Drills when the power outages would prowl through the school grounds and they didn't have to worry about being identified in the dark. Other times they would find their paths quite intentionally crossing on Tuesday evenings and the two would share brief conversations in front of the bowling alley. Over the next two years however their covert little moments became fewer and fewer until one day, even those stopped.

* * *

It was almost a year before Cecil and Earl spoke again. The end of their first year of high school arrived quickly and Cecil was just about finished with his first day of work at his summer job unpacking crates at the Ralph's. He stepped out the back door to retrieve the last crate when a hood was placed over his head and he was dragged away by a pair of strong arms. They dragged him into the middle of the empty lot before they removed the bag, which had essentially been useless since the velvet cloaks made it obvious just who the assailants were. His attempts to fight back were futile as two of the scouts pinned his arms to the grass and one weighed down his legs. One of them pulled an eraser from his pocket and grabbed Cecil's chin roughly.

"Stop squirming, Palmer," he fleered as he pushed the hair back from Cecil's forehead. Taking the eraser he began to quickly rub it in an X along his hairline. Determined not to give them the satisfaction of knowing just how badly it stung, Cecil searched desperately for something to focus on until the burning would end. His eyes found a raven that was slowly spiraling downward. The raven came to rest at the feet of another scout who stood a good distance away, silently watching. Even in the murky, darkening evening Cecil could make out the familiar arrangement of freckles and the pale eyes that were uncomfortably glued to the patchy ground of the vacant lot.

"Enough," Earl interjected abrupty after a few moments, reaching down to retrieve a small envelope that was strapped to the back of the raven. "We've earned our patches, enough." Immediately the burning stopped and the scouts released their hold on Cecil.

"Thank you for your service to the community and the Night Vale Chapter of the Boy Scouts," the primary offending scout added with a curt nod before turning and filing towards the street after the others, leaving Cecil and Earl alone in the vacant lot. Earl offered a hand to help Cecil up, but he refused it and got to his feet by himself.

"Congratulations on your bullying patch," Cecil said sharply as he pressed a finger to the tender blistering welt forming on his forehead.

"It's a torture and inflicted pain patch," Earl clarified with a shake of his head. "Cecil, this isn't how it looks. They wanted to take you for the full blood sacrifice patch, I convinced them the torture patch was an easier achievement-"

"You don't have to explain anything to me, you don't owe me anything," Cecil clipped. He turned and took several steps towards the lone crate behind the Ralph's before turning back. "In fact, just stay away from me."

In the weeks following the event, Cecil spoke of it to no one. He combed his hair from further over so a few of the creamy locks shifted into place to cover the ugly scar. Angry and hurt as he was, he just couldn't find the words to blame Earl for what had happened. It would remain a secret for as long as he could keep it, which wasn't particularly long considering his mother had second sight.

* * *

Assistant Cub Leader Earl Harlan had stood alone in the vacant lot for several more minutes that night before following after the rest of his troop. At Cecil's request, he left him very much alone, though he never really stopped noticing him altogether. The summer they turned sixteen changed Cecil drastically. The next time Earl saw him at school that fall, Cecil was an entirely new person who exuded confidence instead of gawkiness and always seemed to be followed by a crowd instead of spending his time climbing trees by himself. It was the autumn that his eyes began to glimmer with strange colors and his hair seemed to lighten a few shades; it was also the autumn he began to leave a supposed trail of broken hearts and unrequited love letters in his wake. Rumors swirled through the high school hallways. Some whispered that his family had vanished without a trace one night. Others gushed about his being the chosen one of an ancient Night Vale-ian prophecy. A few even swore they heard he was apprenticing down at the radio station under the legendary Leonard Burton himself.

Earl wasn't sure what was fact or fiction when it came to Cecil. It was true that he was vastly different. His voice had dropped an octave to a smooth, hypnotic lull. He had traded his hoodies and worn-out blue sneakers for ties and vests and shiny black dress boots that gave the impression he was older than he looked. During a school assembly in which Earl had wound up sitting in the row behind him, he noticed Cecil had even gotten a tattoo - a tribal eye etched in indigo that peeked out over the edge of his collar. As for the rumors though, Earl only knew the few facts he saw when nobody else was looking. Once he had spotted Cecil alone beneath the stadium bleachers, hands visibly shaking as he smoked a cigarette he had stolen from one of the teachers. After staying late one afternoon to help grade papers for extra credit, Earl was walking down an empty hallway when he heard Cecil's voice from one of the vacated classrooms. Cecil was reading off a scripted advertisement when his melodic voice caught and stuttered. There was a pause before a brief string of profanity, followed by a single muffled self-berating that Earl caught through the door: '_Perfect, Cecil. Perfect, perfect, this has to be perfect, or they'll kill you like they killed the others._' Earl noticed that some days Josie - the little old lady who ran the pawn shop down on 7th - would pick a sickly pale Cecil up early from class. Multiple times Earl would glance out the window of his physical sciences lab room and see Cecil spending his free period tangled in the branches of the eye tree, shoulders shaking with sobs. He didn't know if the rumors were true, but he didn't entirely believe the suave reputation that Cecil didn't mind that the student body liked to propagate. Whatever had happened that summer, it had been something terrible.

He never approached Cecil about any of the things he saw. He never approached Cecil period. The two regarded each other as strangers, except for the few quiet moments when Earl didn't have scout survival training projects to work on or badges to earn. That was when he would comb through the Daily Journal and clip out all the articles on '_the station intern who outlived all the past records against all odds_', and '_the bright and promising young man who earned the annual full scholarship to NVCC._' Earl kept the articles in a little shoebox under his bed where he also kept a torn-out and carefully folded page from the Europe book he had found years ago. It was the photograph of the Alps.

On graduation day Earl had proudly walked the line and received his diploma. Amidst the rush of family celebrations and the unfortunate piranha attack that followed the ceremony, he had slipped away to change out of the uncomfortably hot and now tattered graduation robes and back into his scout uniform. As he walked across the parking lot, he spotted Cecil back at the eye tree, a hand caressing the smooth gray bark. Their eyes met across the distance, and a hint of a smile passed between them. It was the last time they saw each other for a very long time.

* * *

No sooner had Cecil sat down at his desk than a timid intern, shirt soaked with a dark, oozing stain, tapped him cautiously on the shoulder.

"M-mr. Palmer?" the intern jumped back when he turned to look at her. "This came under the door for you this morning." The young woman handed him a small envelope that was also stained with the dark ooze. Cecil smiled as kindly as possible.

"You must be Intern Leticia. I heard you had quite the night last night what with that vortex in the supply closet." Intern Leticia twitched a bit at his mention of the supply closet. Cecil slipped the envelope open. Inside was a blank sheet of paper with a scrawled note that said simply '_Interview_' above an address and time. Cecil studied it for a long moment before folding it and placing it next to his steaming mug of coffee. "Leticia, do you know who is being interviewed?"

"Um, it's the new scout master. Wendell's mummified body was discovered last night in the dumpster out back of the post office and the city clerk already read the runes for his replacement." Leticia lifted a few sheets of paper from her clipboard. "Earl Harlan it says here." Cecil stared for a long moment at his mug. One glance at his skittish new intern ruled out sending her to do the interview instead. With a little cough to clear his throat, he politely thanked Leticia. His coffee was still slightly too hot, but he sipped it down quickly anyway before snatching up a handheld tape recorder.

Earl Harlan lived in a little duplex in the old part of town. Not Old Town Night Vale where the houses had stood for centuries - some even possibly millenia; it was the old part of Night Vale that had been built quickly and cheaply sometime in the 1960s when brown and yellow floral wallpaper was in vogue and tupperware was still a brilliant innovation. It took some self-convincing for Cecil to ring the doorbell. Earl had changed so much, but at the same time he hadn't changed at all. Row upon row of badges peeked out from the sash he wore over his new scout master's uniform. His face had lost the soft edges, but not the freckles. The ginger tangle of his hair wasn't quite as messy anymore, but his pale blue eyes still held that childlike light. Cecil was caught off guard, but recovered smoothly.

"Cecil," Earl brightened, stepping to the side of the doorway. "Come in, come in." Cecil nodded politely and followed Earl into the slightly unkempt little living room. Books (not entirely municipally-approved books either, Cecil noted) cluttered the little coffee table. A few pairs of muddied hiking boots lined the wall along with half-open rucksacks presumably still awaiting unpacking from the previous weekend's urchin-fishing extravaganza. Cecil sat easily on the worn corduroy sofa. Earl took the seat across from him and stared at him with a disbelieving little smile. "How long has it been, Cecil, six years?"

"Something like that," Cecil affirmed as he pulled his tape recorder from his satchel, switched it on, and set it between them on a stack of books about venomous amphibian identification.

"And look at you," Earl continued. "A real radio journalist now. I always said you'd make it. If any of us was going to make it, it would be you." Cecil ignored the comment entirely and pretended to very busily flip through his notebook to the questions he had scribbled down on his way out of the station. "I catch your show some nights you know. You do a good job." Cecil looked up at him with a professional smile.

"Night Vale Community Radio appreciates your support. Listeners like you are why we do what we do," he recited. "If you don't mind, could you describe your initial reaction to the news of your promotion to scout master?" Earl blinked a few times.

"I suppose I was saddened at first by the news. Wendell was not only _my s_cout master as a boy, but he was also a very good friend. His passing is a devastating loss to the whole troop," he paused, folding his hands thoughtfully. "At the same time, I'm of course thrilled to be the leader of such a wonderful group of boys. We're going to be working on some new changes to the curriculum, and I'm excited to see where we go from here." Cecil nodded. "Can I get you something to drink?" Earl offered.

"No, thank you." Cecil shifted on the sofa and leaned forward to adjust the volume on the recorder. "Now you were one of the fastest scouts to ever ascend through the ranks to become a full-ranked Dark Scout, which is the highest honor achievable. Would you say this had something to do with your recent promotion above those who had more experience and seniority?" Earl was thoughtful for a moment.

"I suppose. I was _very_ dedicated to the troop when I was younger." Cecil didn't even pause to think about how directly pointed the response sounded. "I plan to show that same dedication in my new role as well."

"And you mentioned some changes you'd like to see come into effect, is there anything in particular we can expect to see in the near future?" Cecil asked quickly in his most professional tones. The way Earl was carefully watching him was making him nervous.

"I hope to use a more educational approach. I lost several good friends to careless accidents due to the hands-on method Wendell preferred."

"I think that about wraps up all our questions!" Cecil hurriedly closed his notebook and reached for the tape recorder on the table. "Thank you for your time, Scout Master Harlan." The device was clicked off and stowed back in his shoulder satchel.

"I heard you went to Europe," Earl said quietly. Cecil froze. "How were the mountains?"

Cecil was unable to keep the caustic bite of bitterness from his response. "The mountains don't exist. They never did."

"Ceec, what can I say to make things okay between us again?" Earl sighed, resting his forehead against the palm of his hand.

"There isn't anything you can say," Cecil replied coolly as he stood to leave. As an afterthought, he spun on his heel. "It wouldn't change things but it would be nice to finally get an apology for what happened out back of the Ralph's that night," he spat acerbically.

"You never _let _me apologize. You said to leave you alone and I figured the least I could do was respect your wishes," Earl explained weakly.

"You didn't think that maybe it still needed saying? Maybe it was just another patch to you, Earl, but I still have the scar to show for it," Cecil brushed back his neatly arranged hair to show an ugly white X-mark just below his hairline.

"Then I guess we both were branded against our will," Earl finished quietly. Cecil's eyes dropped to the scout commander's left wrist where the darkened form of an eagle in flight was still visible against the tanned skin. Whatever argument he had left was silenced immediately. "I never wanted this, Ceec. Not for us. If I could go back..." Earl trailed off.

"What would you do if you could go back?" Cecil pressed. He wavered halfway between the sofa and the front door, lost in the _what-if_s that really made no impact on reality.

"I would have chosen you."

* * *

It took a long time for Cecil to even meet with Earl as friends; it took an even longer time for him to agree to give the relationship a try. Even so, their first few dates were a bit rough. It was immediately apparent that Cecil's trust would be hard-earned. Fortunately Earl had never been afraid of hard work, especially when he was working with something he was passionate about. There were little victories along the way - moments when Cecil would unexpectedly say something deeper than casual surface conversations, glimpses through the impenetrable wall he had spent years building up against the world. They were few and they were small for a long time until the first chink in the wall began to crack.

It was a date like most of their dates had been so far, simply dinner and a walk through town. Presently, Earl was walking Cecil back to his apartment near the station. Like the gentleman that he was, Earl stopped a respectful distance from the door. They exchanged a goodnight, and Cecil was fumbling with the keys to the door when he very unexpectedly turned, crossed the hallway to Earl, and kissed him. It was deliberate, but it was also very short and very strange. Cecil took a step back and eyed him curiously after. "That's the first time I've ever done that," he said simply.

Earl managed a grin. "You're more the type to_ be _kissed then?"

Cecil shook his head slowly. "More the type to never have kissed anyone at all before."

"I thought in high school everyone said-" Earl stopped himself before he repeated any of the multiple rumors he'd heard circulated about Cecil's personal life.

"Kids in high school say a lot of things," Cecil shrugged. "Good night, Earl." The door closed quietly behind him, leaving the scout master alone in the hallway. He cast a wary glance in both directions. With the snail's pace at which their relationship was progressing, he hadn't bothered to file for any physical activity licensing at all yet. Cecil hadn't turned him in for the books, so of course he wouldn't turn Cecil in for the kiss. It would be their secret just like their talk of mountains as children.

Secrets are hard to keep however, especially in a place like Night Vale. The very next morning's Journal featured an article on the new scout master and his illegal love interest. Secret Police had witnessed the kiss after all, and coupled with the lack of paperwork, the affair was torrid by municipal standards. Earl wasn't at all surprised when a note slid under his door that only bore the mark of an eye and a scribbled '_10:00_'. At precisely 10:00 that night he found Cecil exactly as he expected beneath the tired branches of the eye tree at the edge of the school parking lot. He was sitting cross-legged in the magenta leaves exactly as he had been years ago, except this time he was twitchily smoking a cigarette with one hand.

"I expect you read the paper?" Cecil began abruptly.

"Well, yes," Earl said, sitting back on his knees across from Cecil. "It is mandatory after all."

Cecil scoffed. "Since when do we abide by the law?" They were quiet for a minute. This time Cecil was the one looking anywhere but at his best friend.

"People are already talking, Ceec. Parents are saying they don't want someone with a felony on their record teaching their children."

"Nobody voluntarily leaves the troop alive, Earl, we both know that. So what are you going to do?" he exhaled. Earl went quiet again the way he seemed to always go quiet to think through his deeply-felt responses.

"I'm going to make the right choice this time. I choose you, Cecil." Cecil's eyes finally flickered onto him.

"What?"

"I choose you. Screw the scouts, screw the Secret Police-"

"_Earl_," Cecil hushed sharply, shooting a paranoid glance to the darkness beyond the tree.

"Screw Night Vale, Cecil," Earl continued, not bothering to quiet his voice. "Let's just up and leave before they can stop us. We can live out our lives believing whatever we want and we won't have to worry about being watched or listened to or arrested for wanting to keep our private lives private."

"Where would we go?" Cecil asked with a desperate little laugh.

The childlike glimmer returned to Earl's eyes, lighting up his entire expression. "We'll go to Liechtenstein and climb the mountains this time. We'll visit the savanna in Africa. We'll swim in the Ganges. We can go anywhere, do anything. You and me - Palmer and Harlan. World explorers." Cecil's smile flickered like a dying ember - one moment there and dimming the next. Reaching out a hand, he traced his thumb along a particularly dense patch of freckles just under Earl's right eye.

"I can't," he said finally with a dismal shake of his head. Earl wilted visibly. "I can't just leave Night Vale. I'm...I'm not ready." The rest of the sentence was easily understood in the silence. _Not ready to believe you won't disappear again. Not ready to be forgotten the next time things change. Not ready to be left alone with more scars and no home to come back to. _One victorious battle was not enough to win the war. It had taken months for Cecil to take that first step, to finally start to trust again. Earl had been foolish to think one kiss meant all his years of lonely daydreams were about to come true. He didn't bother trying to hide the single tear that burned its way down his cheek as he stood to leave. "I'm sorry," Cecil said quietly. Earl just nodded.

* * *

Long years passed for Night Vale, perhaps even longer than in the rest of the world. Time changed things and places and people. It changed nearly everything. Somewhere along the line Cecil had found himself. He had come to peace with his past and embraced his future as a sort of local celebrity who soothed the town to sleep at night over the airwaves. Earl had found himself too. He had implemented several positive changes in the troop and had produced some of the finest scouts Night Vale had ever seen. There were some things however that all the time in the world couldn't change - namely the dull ache that still throbbed in Earl's chest every night as he turned on the radio. At first he had avoided listening to Cecil's show altogether, afraid it would just bring back the memories of that awful night that he had asked him to run away together, but over the years Earl had found a strange comfort in closing his eyes and listening to Cecil's voice. Even if it still stung a little, especially now that Cecil spoke so frequently of his new love interest on the show.

Earl met him once. Carlos the scientist. It was just after the annual week-long hike through the canyon that happened every spring. As they packed up the camp on the last morning, Earl had been bit by an extremely rare breed of double-headed snake. He wasn't afraid of the poison, but he figured he should have the venom tested at the lab just to make sure it wasn't deadly. And anyway, the twisted part of him wanted to know just what about Carlos had so captured Cecil's fancy.

"You said the snake was definitely venomous though?" Carlos asked as he carefully scraped a small flake of skin from the wound into a petri dish. Earl was seated on one of the metal examination tables in the lab next to Big Rico's. He had expected there to be rows of scientists studying bubbling chemical potions and the hum of electricity filling the air. He had anticipated just getting a peek of Carlos and his '_perfect_ _hair_' from afar. Instead the lab was empty except for the two of them, rows of unused equipment, and the echoing silence.

"It was venomous, though not deadly. At least that's what the book said. Though honestly I can't say I put too much stock into what books say these days," Earl replied with an easy laugh.

"In this town, I don't blame you," the scientist said, smiling wryly. It was clear that he was charming in a very structured, reserved way.

"It's been almost a year since you moved here right?" Earl winced as Carlos dug at the bite with a small metal instrument.

"It'll be a year in about two months," Carlos said distractedly. "This might pinch a bit." He inserted a syringe into one of the toothmarks to extract a sample of the venom, causing Earl to wince again.

"You still liking it here?" he managed through gritted teeth.

Carlos deftly removed the syringe and replaced it with a ball of cotton to soak up any blood. "Relatively," he shrugged. "Keep pressure on that for a few minutes while I take a look at this." Pulling out three more dishes from a drawer beneath the exam table, Carlos measured several drops of the venom onto each and began mixing various chemicals into a test tube.

"So I take it you know Cecil?" Earl asked as innocently as possible. "The radio host, I mean." Carlos shot him a sideways glance as he carefully measured out his chemical mixture with an eyedropper.

"A bit." He sighed and stood up straight. "We've never actually spoken more than a handful of times, though you'd never guess by the way he goes on about it on the radio." He leaned back over his petri dishes to check for any reaction in the venom.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to presume anything," Earl stopped watching Carlos and started watching a patch of the concrete floor instead.

"Don't worry about it, you're not the first person to ask me if we're dating." He noted the lack of a reaction in the dishes and stepped back to Earl. "You're not even the first person today," he added as he removed the cotton ball and checked for any oozing from the bite. With a little smile he carefully pressed a sterile bandage to the puncture. Carlos was kind too, then - and quite obviously very smart. It was no wonder really that Cecil was so smitten. "You should be good to go. I'm running a 24-hour test on one of the dishes, so if I find anything abnormal I can reach you...?"

"At the lodge, just ask for Earl Harlan," Earl finished as he pushed himself off the table and rolled the sleeve of his uniform back down over the snake bite. "Hey, listen," he said against his better judgment. "If things ever change between you and Cecil, take as good care of him as you do of injured strangers."

* * *

The last time Cecil and Earl ever spoke was at the radio station on the fateful day of Wilson's and Donovan's graduations to the rank of Eternal Scouts. Earl had known for a while - maybe always - that he was going to die. It was a part of his duty as scout master after all to preside over the dangerous and unknown ceremonies. By the time Cecil was sitting across from him for the last time, politely asking him professional questions, he had already made up his mind. The simple gesture wasn't meant to hurt Cecil at all; Earl just needed him to know that all the long years later, it had always been him. That even as the scout master was walking to his imminent death in that same vacant lot behind the Ralph's, it would always _be _him. As he gave Cecil's arm a gentle squeeze with one hand, with the other he slipped the carefully preserved folded page from the Europe book across the desk. Even if Night Vale saw it, they wouldn't understand what it meant, the way it represented their lives that could have been. That much was for only Cecil and Earl to know. It was their last shared secret, one they would finally be able to keep.

* * *

_End Notes: I have this headcanon that the first year of the Night Vale Boy Scout curriculum is just really stupid, useless versions of actual wilderness survival techniques, and after that they just start learning all this dark and creepy stuff. Sorry if the timeline on this is a little messed up, I tried my best to get it to flow okay. Thanks for reading! Critique is appreciated, as always. :)_


End file.
